Today, we took a big step into e-commerce with QuickBooks® Commerce, a business management platform to help small businesses attract and sell to new customers across multiple channels. I wanted to share some thoughts with our accounting customers about why we made this leap. This letter posted on the QuickBooks Online blog on Sept. 23.

We spend a lot of time thinking about how small businesses compete in the world of AI, automation, and cloud computing. Big businesses have a built-in edge—they can afford expensive tech. Our mission, the thing that drives us every day, is finding new ways to help small businesses like yours compete, even when you can’t hire any extra people. We want to help you compete by creating and then getting your businesses access to similar tools.

One of the areas we’ve been focused on, especially as COVID-19 has taken its toll on the small business landscape, is the need for a single tool that helps users acquire customers for their businesses and understand the most effective channels for growth. The need has become acute—something I felt after speaking to one of our customers. Freddie Hewett runs Stag Coffee—he sells coffee, prepared meals, and coffee accessories at his two stores. When COVID-19 hit, he instantly lost all foot traffic.

But Stag Coffee has a strong social presence via Facebook and a WordPress website, so Freddie pivoted his business online. He began taking grocery orders from the local community and delivering safely to their doors. Freddie put up a list of products that he could sell on his website with an email address to send requests to. And that worked – for about a week. His basic website didn’t provide real-time inventory and didn’t connect with his point of sale, so he’s literally tracking everything – every sale and every order – on a spreadsheet.

Demand is high, but the spreadsheet is not in real time. In his words, it’s a nightmare.

Freddie has all the ingredients for success: two stores with point of sale, a strong social presence, a website, and a simple product catalogue. But, he needs a flexible storefront, real-time tracking of inventory, multi-channel management, and order management – all of the complex commerce capabilities needed to replace his spreadsheet and unlock his growth.

QuickBooks’ vision is to give our customers one integrated platform to centrally run and manage their small business. Our solution—QuickBooks Commerce—helps our customers sell across multiple sales channels including online storefronts, marketplaces, and POS systems. QuickBooks already had the financial, capital, and employee management capabilities to help our customers understand their business. Now we can help offline small businesses make the leap to digital e-commerce, and help mid-market and enterprise companies build out their omnichannel capabilities.

As your business grows and you want to expand to new channels, we’ll have integrations and collaborations ready to go so you can expand without the complexity of managing a new channel. Amazon, ShopKeep, Squarespace, and dozens more are already on board. Your listings, products, inventory, and orders will all be in sync.

Because everything is tied together, you’ll be able to see data on profitability insights, ROI on marketing spend, new opportunities to expand your product line. And if you have questions in the future, we plan to leverage our expert platform to not only help you with your bookkeeping, but connect you with an expert to optimize your shopping cart, or help you expand into new social channels. It’s a big step into e-commerce for us, but we think it’s our duty, because we know an open platform can become the source of truth to grow your business.

At QuickBooks, we’ve been your trusted partner in managing complexity for more than 25 years. We began by helping you manage your books and grew into a platform that helps you get paid fast, manage capital, and pay employees with confidence. When COVID-19 upended the small business community, we used our fintech experience to help our customers get more than $1 billion in Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program loans. At every stage of your business, we want to help simplify your business. Now we’ll do the same for omnichannel customer growth. And we won’t stop working hard for you until you are back on the road to growth.

—Alex

Watch a special presentation below on QuickBooks Commerce:

QuickBooks Commerce will be deployed in a phased rollout; new U.S.-based customers who purchase QuickBooks Essentials, Plus, or Advanced will have access first, available now.

QuickBooks Commerce general questions

Q: Who is QuickBooks Commerce available to today?

A: QuickBooks Commerce is available to QuickBooks Online customers who are paying for a subscription to Essentials, Plus, or Advanced, and who do not use inventory or multi-currency features. Eligible customers will see ‘Commerce’ in the left navigation of their QuickBooks Online account. They will then go through the qualification survey to determine if they qualify.

We expect to fully roll out QuickBooks Commerce to all eligible customers by the end of February 2021.

Q: Are customers on the wholesale discount eligible to use QuickBooks Commerce?

A: Currently, QuickBooks Commerce is not available for customers on the accountant-billed wholesale discount. We are working on enabling this in 2021.

Q: Can accountants access QuickBooks Commerce for their clients who have signed up for it independently?

A: Currently, accountants cannot access QuickBooks Commerce via their QuickBooks Online Accountant account. We are working on enabling this in 2021.

Q: Is QuickBooks Commerce available to clients I add through QuickBooks Online Accountant (e.g. bill my firm, bill my client)?

A: Not currently, this is something we are working on enabling in 2021.

Q: When will QuickBooks Commerce be available to existing QuickBooks Online customers?

A: We are looking to start with a small base and expand more in 2021.

Q: How does QuickBooks Commerce’s functionality differ from TradeGecko’s?

A: We have improved integration with QuickBooks Online including turning off inventory in QuickBooks Online for Commerce users as well as pre-mapped chart of accounts based on some smart defaults.

We are working on exclusive features like eCommerce settlement reports, QB Payments support and improved data consistency.

Q: How do ProAdvisors sign up for QuickBooks Commerce?

A: In the current limited release, QuickBooks Commerce is only available to customers who sign up for both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Commerce through this page. We are working to expand availability in 2021.

Q: Will you be offering QuickBooks Commerce customized training for ProAdvisors?

A: We do not have training for the current limited release, but plan to provide more in-depth content as QuickBooks Commerce becomes more broadly available.

Q: How many users will be included in the QuickBooks Commerce subscription?

A: The number of users is the same as QuickBooks Online so it varies based on the QuickBooks OnlineSKU.

Q: Is QuickBooks Commerce available with a wholesale discount?

A: We do not currently have wholesale pricing for subscriptions today.

Q: Who is QuickBooks Commerce targeted to?

A: QuickBooks Commerce is targeted to B2C or B2C+B2B hybrid customers that are online sellers.